Collecting trading cards, such as sports cards, continues to be an enormously popular hobby. Particularly rare or unique cards are quite valuable and demand very high prices from enthusiastic collectors.
Various features can be added to or included in trading cards, such as a celebrity autograph or a piece of actual, game-used equipment to make them more sought after because of their uniqueness. “Game-used equipment” typically refers to the fabric of a sports uniform or the covering of a sports ball actually used in a game, but can include many other items. Outside the area of sports, collectable cards have been made which include a small piece of a costume or a small piece from the set of a popular film, for example.
Trading cards that include a small piece of game-used equipment, such as a small swatch of fabric, are commonly called “game-used” cards. Cards in which the swatch includes a portion of a printed or sewn-on patch (by either appliqué or embroidery) are commonly called “patch” cards, a subset of “game-used” cards Approximately 1000 cards can be made from a typical sports jersey, for example. Of those, about 50-100 will includes a portion of an added visual attribute or “patch.” As used herein, “memorabilia” is not limited to equipment that was actually used in a game, though that is typically the case.
Typically, a game-used card is made from two laminated layers of substrate, usually cardstock, printed with indicia, such as pictures or information. A window is cut into one of the card layers and the swatch of fabric or other equipment is laminated between the substrate layers so as to be captured and enclosed on all edges of the piece in a “frame.” In this manner, the swatch cannot easily be removed and, in the case of fabric, the edges are protected from fraying. An example of such a card assembly is shown in FIGS. 1a and 1b. 
Other game-used or patch cards have included the whole of a discrete visual feature on a uniform, such as a small league logo or a single letter from the team or player's name, on a single card. In the case of a letter, for example, a collector could collect all of the letters from a player's name, but it would be impossible to verify that all of the collected letters came from the same uniform. Even if they had been cut from the same uniform, they could not be reassembled into a visually contiguous appearance of the original whole because the edges of the piece would be separated by a margin created by a border or “frame” element of the card.